


four times coulson told daisy he loved her (and one time she believed him)

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Healing, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 09:44:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8573503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy wishes he would stop saying those words.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nausicaa_of_phaeacia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/gifts).



**when he shouldn’t**

“I love you,” he says and Daisy twists her mouth like he’s just made a cruel joke at her expense. Which is exactly the expression she wants to be making right now.

“No, you don’t,” she says.

“Daisy-”

“Stop lying.”

 

**while you were sleeping**

He mutters “I love you” a couple of times when she is asleep, or when he thinks she is. 

She keeps her eyes closed and maybe she should get up and tell him it’s okay, she’s okay, it’s just pain, because he sounds so desperate for her to be okay. To live. Which is strange. To know that it matters to someone whether she lives or does. She knows Coulson cares, of course, it’s just, she hadn’t felt that in a long time. He keeps whispering those words like he’s speaking to himself, or praying (to whom? Daisy knows Coulson doesn’t believe in any God, _Is he praying to me?_ ), like it’s important to him to say them out loud (even in a whisper) and Daisy wants him to stop, please stop already, the words are taking her pain again and she doesn’t want that.

Because it’s good, the pain is good. The fact that she almost died for them is good. Maybe now the team will forgive her. Maybe she can stay now.

 

**because he can’t stop the words from spilling**

“I love you.” The words lap against her neck like warm liquid, as he leaves a trail of kisses. He realizes, though. “Sorry, sorry, I know you don’t want to hear that.”

She presses a smirk against his temple as she sits on his desk, wrapping her legs around him. 

“Is this like a bad habit of yours?” she teases him. She is not angry, and it’s not something that is going to stop her kissing him, once she’s started.

“Might be,” he says, taking her lips with his.

His mouth move playfully, while his right hand anchors her to the desk, touching her hip, her thigh. Daisy knows it doesn’t matter to him, if she never says it back. She used to think that was the whole point of it, to hear it said back.

They’re in his office in the plane, surrounded by all his things, exiled things, carried from his old office, the old-looking artifacts and the mementos and the music records. She likes it better than the Director’s office, this is more him. The fact that it doesn’t stay in the same place. It flies. It moves constantly. 

Daisy holds his face in her hands.

“I don’t trust words,” she says. It’s not just that. Words have hurt hurt more than anything, more than any blow or gunshot or loss. Words are ugly things. “I don’t like words.”

Coulson buries his face in her neck, and nods against her collarbone, the brush of his nose making her shiver. With one hand (skillful, Daisy laughs without a sound) (with his right hand, she notices the left is resting on the desk) he undoes the buttons of her black trousers. The soft, elegant background buzz of the engines makes the silence bearable. Daisy doesn’t like words, but she hates their opposite too. And what’s happening is too serious, Coulson is too serious, she wishes they had at least music on (maybe one of coulson’s old-fashioned and unfashionable records) to make them lighter. Instead of music she moans softly.

He pushes two fingers inside her, surprising Daisy with how easy it is, how good it feels.

“No more words,” Coulson says, his mouth serious against her cheek.

 

**every day**

But he kept saying those words.

And many others.

(He didn’t promise, so he’s not breaking a promise this time)

She hears it loud when he is not actually saying the words. When she comes from a long mission and Coulson waits until their debriefing is over and he makes sure she is safe and they are alone to grab Daisy’s face in his hands and she is not sure the _I love you_ is in the waiting or in the hands.

That’s the thing. Daisy can never tell if it’s in his distance or in his closeness where Coulson loves her louder. Maybe it’s how he picks one or the other, how he always wants to catch her but sometimes he knows he has to let her fall. That’s loud, sometimes deafening. The words are quieter - whether he says them casually in the morning, or punctuated by passion at night. Daisy wants to be jealous of his easiness with words, his eagerness with words, but she can’t be jealous of Coulson, or regret the way he is. She goes back to the memory of being in a hospital bed, when she got hurt, and his quiet prayers. Every time she goes back the Daisy of her memory changes, she is not so keen on wishing Coulson would stop saying I love you. The Daisy in her memory kind of wants to hear him say it.

“Were you scared, the first time you said it to me?” Daisy asks one night. After sex she’d bolder, having seen a side of Coulson he doesn’t let anyone else to see - and she is not talking about the sex itself. 

Coulson blushes at the question like he thinks she is teasing him.

“I was,” he admits. “And you were right - I was lying. Because I didn’t know what I meant.”

That’s what scares Daisy the most, even now.

“I didn’t know what we were,” Coulson adds, almost into his hand, into Daisy’s hand he is holding, staring very intently, like he is trying to count the imperfections - that ugly mole - but in reality he is just trying to hide his shyness. “I didn’t know what we could be.”

These days she has learned to put some music on beforehand - his record player when they are in his office, her cell phone pretending to be his record player elsewhere, like now, on her bed. Even so, the music doesn’t drown it out. Daisy still hears it.

She hears it in his shy undecided plurals.

He just can’t stop saying the words, even when he is completely silent, asleep besides her, asleep against the curve of her back.

It’s quiet, but she can hear him. And sometimes she almost believes it.

 

**because you do too**

The cracking noise her neck makes when she lifts her head from the screen would be loud enough to disturb anyone, but Coulson is dozing off and impervious. Daisy wonders just how many hours she has been working on this hack. She touches the coffee mug by her side, icy cold.

“Are you asleep?” she calls to Coulson, a bit disappointed. “Hey, you promised to keep me company.”

He makes a noise of protest.

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” he says, sounding very not.

Daisy leaves the laptop for a moment, leaves the table, and walks around the couch to take a good look at him. He’s sprayed on the couch, with his head resting on his right hand, eyes closed. Like a housecat in winter.

She crouches by his side, feeling the hours of immobility in the muscles of her legs too.

“I’m sorry,” he says, not opening his eyes. “I know I promised…”

“It’s fine, I was just teasing,” Daisy tells him.

She runs his hand along his left arm and his back, stroking him through his shirt. He feels a bit cold like this.

“You can sleep for a while if you want,” she says. “I shouldn’t be too long.”

Coulson shifts his weight, even half-asleep, chasing the warmth of her hands. She smiles.

She knows he shouldn’t fall asleep with his prosthetic - he can, but he’d be in mild pain the next day - so she slips his hand under his sleeve and twists the arm until it unlocks from the docket. She has done this a few times - or rather Coulson (normally so inaccessible when it comes to this) has let her do it a few times. She likes it, not just because of the intimacy, but because it makes her feel useful to him in a very palpable way. She leaves the robot hand on the coffee table by his side, just in case. Coulson turns, hugging himself, the creases in his face smoothed over, looking like a little boy. Daisy grabs the blanket on the back of the couch, it’s not much, but at least he won’t catch a cold. She throws the blanket over him, tucking him in a bit. He’s done this for her a few times, when she’s fallen asleep in front of the laptop in the office, sometimes waking up to his jacket over her shoulders.

“I’ll wake you up when I’m finished, okay?” she tells him, close to his ear.

Coulson nods. He opens his eyes a bit.

“I love you,” he says, with a broad sleepy smile, so casually.

Daisy grins and kisses his eyelids, slowly.

“Yeah. You do.”


End file.
